Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

does everyone just do a separate bubbler?

how much can be accomplished with a spraybar?

what's the best way to make a spraybar?

what are my other options?

Everyone doesnt use the same aeration strategy.

You need a lot more aeration on hot days. Some fish are more sensitive to low DO than others.

Personally I use a separate bubbler.

I am not familiar with the term spraybar, but you can create a venturi effect by restricting/shrinking our outlet back to the fish tank creating more surface agitation./aeration.

thanks. I got my fish yesterday and half of them are just about dead today. the others are gasping at the top so I am franticly looking for info FAST on how to save the rest. I thought that the water circulating through the growbeds and system would be enough surface area but I guess not. I just added a bubbler and some aquarium salt and am going to go back out to find componenets to do a spraybar. I am just worried about putting too much back-pressure on my pump.

high nitrite can cause the same behavior, you should at a min be able to test ammonia, ph and nitrite


what kind of fish?

the more context you can provide the more accurate the help can be. I just gave very general thoughts i had no idea fishies lives hang in the balance.

They are bluegill and they are small...maybe 2". My water is well water. The test kit says my nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, chlorine and everything is very low to non-existant (I haven't even fed them yet, so...) my water is very very hard, however. This is a brand new system and my first ever so I am very ignorant. I just put salt in because I read on here that salt helps with oxygen intake


one weird thing...I have been running the water over the growbeds for a few weeks and there is some sort of salt or white minieral build up on top of the grow media (Hydroton) that I am thinking about taking in to get analyzed.

salt helps with oxygen intake if nitrites are high.. because nitrite inhibits the ability for the hemoglobin to exchange co2 for 02.. but a little salt wont hurt.. it will help with stress and help them not get other problems.

the white buildup is just your hard water.

Well water tends to be devoid of o2. Spray bars are easy, just a bunch of holes drilled into a PVC pipe with a cap at the end. It never hurts to add some bubblers though. There is no way to over oxygenate your system. At least not without oxygen injectors, and even then I think you would be having to try and find the maximum on purpose.

so do I add the spray bars at the top of my system where the water is going into the growbeds? I have been doing some reading and they are saying that the spray bars in regular fish tanks are just there to agitate the water, but I had enough of a problem getting my bell siphens to work and am afraid to mess with that end. I was thinking that peletizing the fill water into spray at the top would be less disruptive...

oh, and I was wondering if I could do anything to my water from my well to oxygenate it prior to adding it to the system...this will probably show my ignorance, but can I add H202? I picked up a bottle of that somewhere...not sure why. or will that be bad.

Hi spindog, I currently use a seperate aquarium air pump with a 14" air stone. Also when my grow bed dumps into the FT I get A LOT of aeration.

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Try spraying the water so that it's exposed to the air before it goes into the tank. Other aeration methods will work as well. Well water can also be high in CO2 and this should help remove CO2. Your pH could change with the aeration so you should keep an eye on this.

Regarding the spray bar. We usually use it over the fish tank and it provides aeration as well as helping with water movement. If you look around the 30 second mark in Brian's system video it shows the spray bar in action. In this case it's setup to circulate the water in a round tank.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awi_4aKJSak

OMG...okay. I guess what I was envisioning was more of a drip bar than a spray bar. I am draining my growbeds into my tank and then pumping back up into the growbeds so there is no way I am getting enough pressure at that end of the system to get that much agitation.

actually there is no way I am getting that much pressure anywhere on my little system...LOL

Don't add hydrogen peroxide with your fish in the water.
Yes, it decomposes into water and O2, but the decomposition isn't instant, and you run the risk of harming your fish. It would probably irritate their skin and maybe cause eye infection (idk, just speculation). Also, you would need a way to know when the decomposition is finished and the water is safe. Seems too complicated, I wouldn't risk it when diffusion is free and easy.

You could get a second, small pump just for running a spray bar.

I know it's a crappy photo, but this is a typical spray bar. Just a piece of pipe with some holes in it.

Ok, no H2O2.

And that spray bar looks more like what I was thinking...whew.

I do actually have another, bigger pump. I am thinking that I might be able to switch to it, do a splitter and do spray bars both top and bottom. Cant overdo the O2, right?

I topped up the tank right before I got the fish with the well water. 2/3 of my fish have gone belly-up. But I will be fine with the ones remaining if I can get them to live. so far they are swimming straight and there is less of a load with the others gone anyway.